"No," Bucky disagreed, but it had been a lie he'd sold, he couldn't be upset if that was exactly what she had seen. "That control was the Ministry's. Because I was scared. I'd just managed to get some amount of freedom, the last thing I wanted was to be thrown back into a cage," he clenched his fist tightly, tighter in compensation for the lack of tension on the left side of his body, feeling a twitch of pain from the nonexistent limb.
He turned back to look at Gracie, trying to keep his own expression hardened. Hearing the break in her voice had been hard enough, but the tears threatened to choke him if he didn't force himself to keep breathing. He knew it was his fault, that he shouldn't have allowed her to cry, and he had no idea how to possibly fix it. Couldn't even fix his own mess. "But I'm fucking sick of being obedient, rolling over whenever somebody wants to get a kick in. So yeah, maybe I've been lashing out, doing stupid shit, trying to test out the boundaries to see how much I'm allowed to get away with before somebody is frying out the insides of my head again."
He closed his eyes, wondering how they went from broccoli to this. Wished he could take it back. Would have gladly eaten a whole plate of the disgusting vegetable to have avoided this. "I don't know, either," he admitted, quiet and pained. "I wake up every day wishing I hadn't, that I could be anybody else." Bucky fell silent, looking as miserable as he had at the early hours of that morning when Mariko had found him, as if no progress had come of this at all. It's not you, it's not your fault, he wanted to say. Wanted to thank her, for sticking by him. Wanted to wipe the tears from her eyes, but he didn't feel allowed when he was the one that put them there.
There was no way he'd manage to tell Skye, after this, beginning to feel like the whole thing was a mistake. Something he should have kept to himself, instead of hurting others too. "Sorry," he whispered out, angry at himself for how small and pathetic the word was, how little it did, as if he deserved any of the forgiveness Gracie had to offer.
"Sorry," he repeated, because he was selfish and wanted her to hate him a little bit less when he started walking away, like a coward.